Game of Thrones actor sues LA District Attorney for $40m for branding him a ‘serial pedophile’

Joseph Gatt has called the allegations against him ‘utterly baseless’

British actor Joseph Gatt, who has appeared in Game of Thrones and Thor, is suing Los Angeles County, its district attorney, an LAPD detective and others for falsely alleging he was a pedophile.

Gatt, 52, was arrested and charged with alleged sexual communication with a minor in 2022.

That charge was later dropped, and the actor has described the claims as “utterly baseless”.

He is seeking $40m in a lawsuit that names as defendants LA County District Attorney George Gascón, LA County Deputy District Attorney Angela Brunson, LAPD Detective Denos Amarantos, Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles.

According to the lawsuit seen by The Independent, Gatt’s arrest in 2022 was due to the actions of an “obsessed” 16-year-old fan. Gatt alleges he did not know the teenager and has never met them.

In October 2020, a friend of the fan bought her a Cameo video message from Gatt in which the actor wished her a happy birthday.

Joseph Gatt in San Diego in 2019 (Leon Bennett/Getty Images)

Subsequently the fan repeatedly messaged Gatt over social media, to which he says he responded in a way that was “wholly appropriate and consistent with typical celebrity-fan exchanges”.

The lawsuit states that the fan then fabricated messages from Gatt which were “sexual in nature and pure fantasy”. They also incorporated a naked image of Gatt, which was taken from his appearance as the prisoner Albino in the action series Banshee.

The suit alleges that the defendants failed to interview the fan until a year after Gatt had been arrested, charged with a “baseless crime” and “publicly branded as a serial pedophile”.

The lawsuit further claims that this series of events amounts to a “shocking and intentional destruction of Joseph Gatt’s acting career and personal reputation by Los Angeles County law enforcement personnel that resulted from a thoroughly botched criminal investigation, entirely lacking any probable cause, led by an obviously conflicted Deputy District Attorney who sought to destroy Gatt based on nothing more than bias and personal animosity”.

It is claimed that Gatt was targeted by Deputy District Attorney Brunson over political disagreements. The lawsuit claims that Brunson “held personal biases and animosity toward Gatt” and “simply ignored the glaring red flags that would have caused any reasonable person to recognize the complete absence of probable cause”.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told The Independent: “We cannot comment on a matter that is related to pending civil litigation.”

Dean Z Pamphilis, a partner with Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, shared a statement with People on his client Gatt’s behalf.

“The arrest and charges against Mr. Gatt—for which he was branded by the Los Angeles DA and LAPD as a serial pedophile—were based on fabricated evidence. Twenty months later, when the fabricated evidence was finally disclosed to Mr Gatt and Mr Gatt’s forensic expert were prepared to expose the truth in open court, the Los Angeles DA voluntarily dismissed the criminal complaint,” the statement read.

“Mr Gatt, however, had already lost his community, his acting career and his personal reputation. We look forward to recovering Mr Gatt’s enormous losses in court.”

Gatt, who was born in Notting Hill, worked on the West End before relocating to Hollywood. He played the Frost Giant Grundroth in 2011’s Thor, Neils Skellig in 2019’s live-action Dumbo and a Thenn warg in three episodes of Game of Thrones.